A Regional Approach to Food Handler Training Requirements: Facilitating the Conversation in Your Region

Six Kansas City area public health agencies tackled the complex problem of similar, but not identical, food handler educational certification requirements. The agencies’ collaborative spirits lead to a reciprocity agreement to universally accept food handler certifications from the involved jurisdictions. The Mid-America Regional Council Environmental Health Work Group provided the platform for the agreement to be reached. The agreement accommodates different training mediums, methods and even finances. During the process, the agencies worked together to standardize food handler educational training amongst each of the jurisdictions. Each agency’s training would have to meet specific, bottom line, food safety requirements while still allowing for the flexibility to teach jurisdictionally specific regulations, codes and policies.
 

Initially, the reciprocity agreement efforts were made to meet concerns expressed by food service owners, managers, employees, and their representatives in the Greater Kansas City metro area. Previous to the agreement, a worker had to pay for and complete training for a food handler license issued by the city or county health agency which his or her place of employment was located. The certification process proved frustrating and costly for a food handler that worked in multiple jurisdictions. In some cases, the food handler would work in each of the six jurisdictions adding further expenses.

This effort has fostered an environment that produced further strides in regional collaboration for overcoming additional environmental health challenges such as, emergency preparedness, response capacity building and volunteer responder training. The completion of this successful project broke down existing jurisdictional silos and falls in line with the collaborative spirit of NEHA.